Jyri Virkki wrote:
> Ali Bahrami wrote:
>> actual emacs binary available. The user has a choice of emacs binaries,
>> and is free not to install the ones that are not of value.
>
> Actually I did have one comment which I forgot in the joy of just
> seeing this case come in ;-)
>
> "Install" is a system-wide action (ignoring user images here) whereas
> "choice" is individual. Mixing the two is confusing.
>
> Not everyone is on laptops, shared machines are still common, so
> having /usr/bin/emacs trigger behavior on the mere presence of this or
> that package isn't ideal. On a shared server both -x and -nox will
> probably be installed since subsets of users may prefer one or the
> other. I'd rather not have the behavior change suddenly for me just
> because some other user went and installed the -x version. So it sure
> would be nice if I can configure something (an env var, .rc file or
> such) to lock in how it'll behave for me.
>
> There's other ways around that so I don't see it as vital, just a
> suggestion that'd be nice to have.
>
>
I thought about that, but decided "not this case".
I don't want to invent a "Solaris emacs-only" solution to this.
There are many programs with more than one implementation, and the
problem of configuring which is the default is something that should
be considered more broadly.
Linux has a scheme, built around double indirection using symlinks,
and a directory named /etc/alternatives (I think, this is from memory).
It's not necessarily the right answer for Solaris, but we need something
in that space.
In a recent email discussion with Bart, he mentioned that there are people
kicking around the idea of a "verexec" program, that would be controllable
via environment variables in some systematic way. Maybe the answer lies in
that direction.
So one of my goals was to do nothing that would impose a new backward
compatibility issue later on when we want to change it.
In the meantime, some things to consider:
- The vast majority of systems in the world are really
single user.
- You can run whichever version you want by using the full
name (i.e. emacs-nox), no matter what some other user installs.
- Shell aliases, or a symlink to /usr/bin/emacs-nox from your
~/bin will let you make "emacs" do whatever you want it to.
Thanks!
- Ali
